$1,815
of $8,000 goal

Welcome!I am Luis Sahagun, I am an Illustrator, Visual Artist, and Educator. I created Tee’s For Teaching as a way to work collaboratively with underserved communities to provide a transformative art experience for public school students.

I believe that art is not only about creativity and innovation. Art can change the way we think about culture and ourselves.

My vision is to expand arts learning in communities of color to fight cultural biases and discrimination.

Your support and contributions will be used for expenses such as: materials (art workshops), transportation (field trips), acquiring workspaces, and curriculum/ lesson plan development.

Thank you in advance for your contributions and if you are not able to financially support Tee's For Teaching, please consider sharing the campaign on social media.

Tee’s For TeachingGoal:My goal is to raise 8,000 in 3 months by providing artist designed graphic t-shirts as incentive for donor support. The images on the tee’s are all original work created specifically for the campaign.

How is Tee's for Teaching different?I aim to develop a curriculum based on specific student populations. Listening to and collaborating with schools, organizations, students, and parents will inform my approach for creating artist-led workshops, lesson plans, activities, lectures, and field trips.

Why is this important?My experience from when I was a student shapes my pedagogy. From kindergarten to graduate school, I have never had a Latinx teacher. Due to this experience, as a child I grew up believing that white people were smarter than people of color. Once I learned to overcome this internalized racism, I vowed to disrupt the system of power, which is still in place, by becoming an educator myself. This project is about celebrating diversity and finding alternative methods to combat structural oppression and cultural bias.

Quick Facts about the state of racial diversity in the educator workforce:-only 13% of public school teachers are teachers of color.

-Students of color and white students report having positive perceptions of their teachers of color, including feeling cared for and academically challenged.

-Teachers with varied backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives provide significant benefits to all students.

-Teachers of color tend to provide more culturally relevant teaching and better understand the situations that students of color may face.

Click on the link below for information about the importance of diversity in teaching (cited information is from this article).

I aim to be a role model, catalyst for fun, dream sparker, and creator of lasting social change in communities of colors throughout the Chicago Southland. I will be partnering with elementary and high school's in the areas of Chicago Heights, Harvey, and Homewood. If you work or live in an area that you feel can benefit from this program please reach out to me.

My Gift to You!I created artist designed graphic t-shirts as incentive for donor support. The images on the tee’s are all original work created specifically for the campaign!

1. Click here to view the image gallery of available designs and submit your donation level of choice. 2. After you have selected your T-shirt design (or postcard| tote bag | framed prints) come back to GOFUNDME and complete the checkout process. 3. If you would like to support without receiving a gift in return, or if you would like to donate in addition to a gift, you may do so.

My personal story:I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1982 and at 4 years old was brought to the United States. My family immigrated to Chicago because my paternal grandfather was working as a laborer for the steel industry as part of the Bracero program. This program allowed Mexicans to be guest workers in the farming and railroad industries as a way for the U.S to obtain cheap labor. Once in this country, both my mother and father found work in the fields and in factories. My two siblings and I grew up undocumented in a trailer park located in Ford Heights, Illinois, which at the time was considered the poorest suburb in the U.S. I was naturalized in 1995 under Ronald Reagan’s Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

In 2001, I graduated from Chicago Height’s Bloom High School, earned a BFA from Southern Illinois University in 2006 and an MFA in painting from Northern Illinois University in 2015. As an artist and educator I have been nominated and granted various awards and scholarships. I’ve participated in multiple solo, juried, invitational, and national exhibits in the U.S and Mexico. I have been featured in New American Paintings (Issue #111), my work has also been showcased at the International Exposition of Contemporary Art (EXPO) Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art- Chicago, The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art (Roswell, NM), Chicago Cultural Center, and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.

I am currently a Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute Chicago, a teaching artist at the Museum of Contemporary Art- Chicago, and an art educator consultant for the Smart Museum (University of Chicago).

Photo: My mother (a.k.a my shero) and I modeling for Tee's For Teaching

We are almost at 1k!! I am feeling the love and I cannot thank you all enough.

I want to address some important points about Tee's For Teaching.

1. I will first be working with public school students that live in cook county, but are just outside Chicago city limits (grey areas in the map). WHY? Most of these communities have ZERO access to arts learning in their communities AND they especially do not have access to teaching artists.
2. My goal (whenever possible) is to work collaboratively and supportively with existing organizations that are already creating social change in their communities.
3. My personal ambitions for my lesson plans are to combat societal constructs that relate to sex, gender, race, and class. I want students of color that are growing up with systemic racism to not feel inferior or invisible.
There is so much power in art education. I realize my artist and educator friends already know this, but I want to make sure everyone outside of these careers are also attune with this concept. Art has the power to transform lives.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!